December 10, 2010

Well, maybe they do and they just don't like him getting all the winner's glory. What about them? After playing him for the last 2 years, they can't like seeing him pull away from their pack in a victory sprint toward 2012. He only has to win the country. They have to win their districts — their politically gerrymandered districts.

Dr Krauthammer leaves out the fact that this may not ramp up the economy. It is not a tax cut. It is a continuation of the current rates. It is intended to be something that does not make things worse, as opposed to something making them better. There are a great many other factors that can still torpedo things.

He also forgets that The Zero, unless he changes his class warfare politics, will have to defend letting the rates go up in '12. Granted, you can tell McConnell negotiated this deal, but this is a continuation of status quo.

Maguro:"I can't understand how the lefties can get so worked up about it."

Triangle Man: "Because, as AJ mentioned, it is all an act."

Au contraire. Lefties get worked up about these sorts of things because they are not concerned, primarily, with economics. The entire system they designed -- whether it be communism or socialism in any of its varieties -- is predicated on the notion of fairness. This fairness cannot be defined and therefore is unattainable. However it must always be sought to the exclusion of other things. If increasing taxes tanks the economy that does not matter because to allow rich folks to have more of what they stole from the proletariat would violate the prime directive of Leftism.

Thus, it's real outrage.

However the assumptions are wrong in ways that most of us recognize easily.

Furthermore, Leftists must pursue power. (Without power provided from legitimate sources force may be used. See, e.g. Cuba or British student riots.) Without said power the goal of creating fairness -- never to be defined -- is not achievable. Anything that interferes with achieving the goal of fairness is per se bad. Therefore anything that denies power to a Leftist is also bad, or evil.

Even when he was, he wasn't. The Republicans haven't budged once since Inauguration Day. Totally out of power, the GOP made him come crawling to them. Now they control the House alone, somehow they're in the driver's seat. Just how the hell does that happen?

I've been involved in discussions recently on other blogs, talking about whether the Republicans/conservatives/TeaPartiershave a built-in advantage here. The idea is:1) Any one of the three branches of government can stop a spending or tax bill (unless Congress can override a presidential veto).2) If no budget bill gets passed, the worst that can happen is a governmental shutdown (like 1996). But that doesn't seem like a very bad thing to modern Tea Partiers. Small bills could be passed to temporarily cover very important "nonessential services".3) Therefore - it makes sense to pass this bill now, since tax increases will happen automatically if it isn't passed. But all the extra spending. That's easy to stop, if Republicans really want to. They can filibuster in the Senate, or use their soon-to-arrive control of the House.

If Republicans actually want to, balancing the budget without any tax increase is entirely within their power in 2011.

Even when he was, he wasn't. The Republicans haven't budged once since Inauguration Day. Totally out of power, the GOP made him come crawling to them.

That's not true. Everything that was blamed on GOP intransigence has actually been due to not enough Democrat votes.The same is true of the current tax rate problem. On top of that, Democrats refused to address it when time was on their side.

The Kraut is right. By agreeing to delay a tax increase the Prez got both a stimulus passed and a chance to separate his image from the Hugo Chavez wing of the Dems. And that 250K cut off was only a cheap trick because the High Speed Printing Presses at the FED are about to turn 250K into a 50K in purchasing power. Therefore a 250K cut off line equals a 1.25M line in Obama's famous long term plan. The dollar prices must sky rocket soon. How does that dollar price of oil look this week?

All the Pubbies have to do is sit on their hands and let the One come to them. There isn't a reason in hell Hussein should get ANY gimmes. Come January the Pubbies will be in the drivers seat. This is all mental. The Pubbies still don't see themselves as having the whip hand.

"All the Pubbies have to do is sit on their hands and let the One come to them. There isn't a reason in hell Hussein should get ANY gimmes. Come January the Pubbies will be in the drivers seat. This is all mental. The Pubbies still don't see themselves as having the whip hand."

"Pubbies?" "Whip hand?"

Is this an excerpt from a piece of slash fiction you're writing about some sort of alt/sex S&M scene, like the Furries or something?

Short answer: They really really really hate the "rich". Obama promised them a pound of flesh and they've been salivating since the primaries.

No, no, NO!

Lefties love the rich, as long as they got rich by inheriting it, by being an actor or entertainer (c.f., Streisand, Barbra), by running fast holding a football under your arm, or by going to an Ivy and settling into a sinecure. (Berkeley counts, and sometimes they'll deign to include graduates of Stanford and Wisconsin, depending what what they studied -- not engineering.) Country club preppies and limousine liberals are the true backbone of the Democrat Party.

If you made your money by working harder than your peers and not by being among the annointed, then, yes, they hate you and everything about you.

I think the biggest victory for Republicans and conservatives out of this whole debate is that the Democrats now argue that anyone making less than $250k is middle class and that their taxes should not be raised. If this was a center left country, Democrats would be arguing that people only under $50k should be given tax cuts. Ultimately, you can't sustain 25% federal spending (and thus sustain Obamacare) by only increasing taxes on the top 2%. You have to raise taxes on everyone to sustain that level of spending. Obama has now made raising taxes on those under $250k, sacrosanct.

we can always count on the Beltway GOP to compromise their compromises in exchange for a better table at Martha's Vineyard

Where is all the leadership from the Republican/conservative side? Why aren't the favorites of those who hate You Know Who getting out in front and leading here?

Where is Mitt Romneycare to lead the charge? Where is Huckster to rally everyone? Where is Yawnlenty to fire people up? Has Daniels declared a truce here too?

As usual, they are all non-entities. You people bitch about being sick of Sarah Palin having such a high profile, but it is clear that until she gets involved in anything, nothing gets done except typical Republican establishment squishiness.

does anyone other than me remember some columnist predicting the lame duck session would produce nothing except sound and fury and would end for the honorable members going home , their hands unsullied by legislative achievement.

all of this lame duck session is posturing--the senate dems, 12 or 13 of whom are vulnerable arent about to go on the skyline given the ass kicking the dems got a month ago. sorry bastards are going to do nothing in an attempt to hold on to their seats--

Fortunately for the country, the repubs can do stuff in the house, but he dems control the senate--Mr Obama can veto anything he desires without much chance for override--IOW: gridlock which will be in the country's best insterest for the next two years.

Krauthammer is mostly right here. The GOP gave Obama what he wanted [and more] because they don't really care about deficits. Especially when those deficits benefit the wealthy. It's rather disgusting but that's the GOP. Their only principle is to keep the wealthy happy.

In fact, they love adding 700 billion to the deficit [over 10 years] in the form of a tax cut for the wealthy but can't find it in themselves to support a 7 billion health plan [over 10 years] for the 9/11 ground zero workers.

Congressional Republicans can't cut much spending because they will not touch Medicare and Social Security anymore than Democrats and they can't cut enough from defense or discretionary spending to get even remotely close to balancing the budget.

Congressional Republicans and Obama are staking themselves on a serious economic recovery over the next two years. That's the only way the deficits can shrink.

So the Tea Party people will have to be united by pushing for major adjustments to Medicare and Social Security, as well as defense, to close the huge deficits.

Obama outmanuevered the Congressional Republicans because he knows they have no serious ideas to fix the deficit. But he also has no ideas either. They can try and overhaul the tax code, but as Reagan showed, a restructured tax code doesn't prevent budget deficits.

I honestly do not get this. Some people on the right seem to think that if there is ethanol subsidies in this or something like that then the Republicans should kill the whole deal and let all the taxes go up in Jan. They are going to do the same thing the Democrats did if you do something like that, they will have allowed a small group of purists to force something on the American people they do not want. The Tea party does not want those taxes to go up and they won't thank the Republicans if they kill this deal. Last I heard the majority of the American people supported the plan, if they kill it Obama looks reasonable and the Democrats and Republicans in Congress look like a bunch of crybabies.

And I don't understand where the trillion is coming from unless Charles is considering the Bush tax cuts to be a stimulus...there might be some ethanol subsidies or an extension in unemployment benefits, but that is not a trillion dollars.

And so what if it helps Obama, if it helps the economy? What are we supposed to do? Hope for disaster?

AlexBecause you live in the United States of America. Not the United States of Alex. Get it?

We're all in this together. No man is an island. But if you think your taxes should only go where you want them to go then I suggest you go ahead and move to an island with no people because you have no concept of what it means [and has always meant] to live in a representative democracy.